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Christopher Kimball's Milk Street


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As most foodie types probably know by now, Christopher Kimball  left Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen last year and has started up a new venture:  Milk Street.

Milk Street has been rolling out this week. You can obtain a free copy of the first issue by signing up for their e-mail list on their website.

Kimball will be joining the Washington Post food chat on Wednesday Oct. 19 12-1pm.

Milk Street's weekly podcast will debut on Oct. 22 via public radio and iTunes.

 

 

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God.  This is like the E Street Band suing Bruce Springsteen because his solo material sounds too much like the songs he wrote and played with them.

Or Cityzen suing Eric Ziebold because people love Kinship.

Or............having trouble coming up with a third one in a different field.

 

Edit:   PS - I've over Cooks Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen for a few years now, but if I wasn't, this action would compel me to cancel every subscription I had with that outfit.

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I received a charter issue last week and read it cover to cover. I found it helpful, well-written, and fascinating. Many of the topics were familiar to me but still useful and fun to read for their concise summation of best practices, e.g., seasoning woks and skillets, poaching chicken. Other articles, such as those about salads and avocados, and scrambled eggs, gave me some new insights. If you're a Dunlop or Ottolenghi disciple you'll be familiar with a lot of these things already, at least as far as this issue is concerned, but it is very well executed and geared to making otherwise "ethnic" techniques regular parts of your overall repertoire.

Cook's and its various incarnations always struck me as solidly grounded but fusty and parochial. If I wanted to make Yankee Pot Roast or apple pie it would have been the first place I would turn. I never turned to it.

I think Milk Street can be a very helpful tool for the avid and internationally minded home cook and I'm eager to see if it can deliver on the promise of the charter issue. ATK's suit against it I think reflects the genuine threat Milk Street presents to their rather stodgy concept.

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I found their initial issue underwhelming.

Of course, it probably didn't help that the first article I read was the one on Cantonese white-cut chicken, a dish I know well due to having Cantonese relatives.  I grew up eating that kind of food. The reason why we include chicken skin when we poach chicken for the broth is because fat imparts flavor.  Fat is good, despite what the health authorities (and it seems, Christopher Kimball) will tell you.

And as usual, like most recipes from the ATK and CI millieu, their rendition of bai qie ji had several ingredients that didn't belong in there...like mirin, rice vinegar and sugar.

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On 1/3/2017 at 6:09 PM, TrelayneNYC said:

I found their initial issue underwhelming.

Of course, it probably didn't help that the first article I read was the one on Cantonese white-cut chicken, a dish I know well due to having Cantonese relatives.  I grew up eating that kind of food. The reason why we include chicken skin when we poach chicken for the broth is because fat imparts flavor.  Fat is good, despite what the health authorities (and it seems, Christopher Kimball) will tell you.

And as usual, like most recipes from the ATK and CI millieu, their rendition of bai qie ji had several ingredients that didn't belong in there...like mirin, rice vinegar and sugar.

The recipe does not say to remove the skin before poaching, but that one may choose to do so afterwards. 

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4 hours ago, Banco said:

The recipe does not say to remove the skin before poaching, but that one may choose to do so afterwards. 

That may be so but it doesn't change my initial impression of Milk Street, which is that Christopher Kimball should probably stick with living off his millions instead of lavishing more of the same tripe on the masses.

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1 hour ago, TrelayneNYC said:

That may be so but it doesn't change my initial impression of Milk Street, which is that Christopher Kimball should probably stick with living off his millions instead of lavishing more of the same tripe on the masses.

Come now, you make him sound like another Guy Fieri. He's not really that bad, though speaking of skin, he certainly seems to have got under yours. 

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